Welcome back, our saviour from Mpls. What took you so long?   Full text...

Following a decade of misguided, shapeless and self-gratifying nonsense, "3121" is his second good album in a row.  Full text...

At last month’s Brits performance he adhered to the first rule of commercial rehabilitation: the best way to get people interested in your new stuff is to mix it with the old.  Full text...

3121 doesnÔ't break any new ground, it just funks up the place, and that boys and girls, is a good thing.  Full text...

Time to brush up on those dance moves and cross your fingers he'll tour...  Full text...

Looks like 3121 is Prince's lucky number. And ours.  Full text...

A bloodless puddle of smooth-jazz grooves and lyrics that wither at the hands of the singer's recent religious ideals.  Full text...

If he wants the comeback to stick, he might want to try a little harder next time.  Full text...

Prince is at his best when his music is unmistakably his. Half of the tracks on 3121 could not have been made by anyone else, but the slushy R&B ballads are not amongst them.  Full text...

Despite a few too many insipid ballads, it's his most focused album in years; devotees of classic Prince will love it.  Full text...

But there's more to 3121 than the prickle of nostalgia: amid the title track's murky, unsettling groove and the grinding techno noise of Love, Prince sounds thrillingly alive, a veteran throwing down a cocky, confident challenge to any young pretenders.  Full text...

It seems like only yesterday - well, April 2004, to be exact - that Prince was unveiling his Sony debut Musicology. Now here he is, just a couple of years later, unveiling his Universal debut, and frankly, only the deeply committed fan would be able to tell the difference between the two.  Full text...

It's a solid record such as this that makes you wonder if it's even possible for an artist of this magnitude to actually satisfy the expectations of a constantly evolving audience.  Full text...

If noting else, Prince is slowly regaining the plot, and of course, there remain plenty of great old records in his catalog to revisit while he finds it.  Full text...

A solid piece of work.  Full text...

3121 is too much a product of "obsessively delineated bounds" than of the gutterluvin', sleazy experimentation indelible to every great album Prince has made.  Full text...

Here is yet another uneven set, lifted by a few moments of intriguing minimalist funk but still padded with syrupy bedroom ballads, raunchy rap and formulaic Latin-pop.  Full text...